Open Tech Today - Top Stories

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Following on its launch of BBC Arabic last year, the BBC plans to be a major producer of original Arabic content.

Creating market-specific content will require new partnerships with local production, media services and marketing firms. In other worlds, big opportunities for local media companies in major Arabic markets.

When BBC's plans are seen in the context of recent investments by News Corp, Google and Yahoo, one thing becomes clear:

Friday, September 04, 2009

As Tim emphasizes, innovative new platforms are game-changers – for companies, economies, all of us. Think how interstate highways, personal computers, the Internet, GPS, even the iPhone each transformed society. Each was a new platform for commerce and people to use.

Today, new technologies are helping redefine what governments as a platform can accomplish. Gov 2.0 means more than simply government use of social media. Absolutely right.

However, let us not lose sight of the whole purpose of Gov 2.0. It is not all about the platform. The platform has a purpose: real-time public service.

Gov 2.0 must keep its eyes on that prize. O’Reilly is closest when he imagines Gov 2.0 as an “organizing engine for civic action.”

What makes Gov 2.0 enormously transformative is that government, powered by new technologies, is more than a platform; it is a catalyst for innovations in real-time, public service. Government offers not only a scalable operating system for services, but also adds raw data, standards, APIs, apps, even investment dollars in some cases.

Gov 2.0 is an open ecosystem in which anyone — a start-up, an agency, an entrepreneurial individual — can invent, enhance or crowdsource a service aimed at the public, or some segment of it. Government becomes one delivery channel among many.

Offering a free, Arabic version of Google Sites is designed to make customized website creation in Arabic a simple process with (of course) searchable results. Google powering Arabic content creation, pure and simple.

Arab publishers, especially regional newspapers, will need to speed up efforts to build strong news sites (and aggregators) and online brands, or risk permanently losing their readers to local Google News in Arabic.

Through search, Google is already the main gateway for most users to reach news sites. Middle East publishers will completely lose control over how their audience reaches them if Google News in Arabic succeeds, if they fail to build a direct relationship with their online readers.

Google moves in apps and news pale in comparison to the dollars and headlines of this week’s big investments of Yahoo and News Corp.

However …

Google is already the #1 site among Internet users in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar.

If Google is able to penetrate both the Arabic content creation and news spaces, it will have a formidable position in the Middle East before the online market truly reaches its growth potential.

But in many ways, it is no surprise. Kingdom Holding Company, controlled by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and owner of Rotana, already owns 5.7% of News Corp. Rotana broadcasts two Fox-branded channels (Fox Movies and Fox Series) in Saudi Arabia.

Last year, James Murdoch made a high-profile visit the Gulf exploring partnerships with major Middle East media firms. His trip included meetings with Prince Al-Waleed to discuss future collaborations.

Now we see the fruit of those meetings. News Corp's first big Middle East investment.

While Yahoo's tie-up with Maktoob.com was a purely digital play, Rotana's media assets include a TV network, a library of over 2,000 Arab movie titles, a production company, record label, music channel, and hotel chain.

First Yahoo, now News Corp. There will be more deals to come as Big Media identifies other opportunities in this young, booming Middle East market.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Media companies are suffering the slings and arrows of online competition for eyeballs and advertising dollars.

CraigsList seems to be the villain of choice, given its outsized role in the collapse of classified ad revenues, the traditional mainstay of newspaper profits.

While simultaneously trying to vilify and emulate CraigsList, most media companies fail to appreciate its ultimate lesson.

CL has plenty of flaws—mainly because it so accurately reflects the imperfections of the masses using it. However, it enjoys spectacular growth while remaining stubbornly committed to a simple (even outdated) design.

The lesson is simple: Pay constant attention to what your users are telling you.

Customer service is the Qi of CraigsList. It is what energizes and sustains its massive community of users.

It also pays.

Excellent customer service breeds customer loyalty. And that makes your content and services more valuable over time while driving down costs.

Don’t know what your users think of your content or services? Then you have found your primary problem. You.

CraigsList, by eliminating marketing, sales, and business development, has eliminated every layer separating its programmers (who run CL) from the users they serve.

No layers = no sound barriers.

User feedback reaches the people who operate CL unfiltered. This can be a painful experience for managers, programmers and writers. But it is irreplaceable if you want to win your customers’ loyalty (and page views).

CraigsList famously responds to annoying complaints with haikus. In this case, their advice to other media companies might be:

Friday, August 28, 2009

Media executives may see recent data on advertising revenues from the Newspaper Association of America as a good news / bad news situation.

They would be wrong. It’s all bad news.

Newspaper ad revenues are down 29% during Q2 of 2009. Obviously bad news. But even their online ad revenues had a double-digit drop of 16%.

So what’s the good news that publishers see? The worst is behind them. Wrong again. The worst is still ahead.

The recession only explains half the loss in print ad revenues. The rest (about 13% of the loss) is pure erosion of the print newspaper business model.

As newspaper publishers search for an online news model that can sustain their revenues and newsrooms, they must apply basic investment strategy … diversify, diversify, diversify.

If you are only business is news, you are heading for a cliff. Yes, you need a digital platform for news. But you also need platforms for other categories of digital content. Either build them, buy them or merge with other companies that already have them.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Eventually, global Internet companies would realize the Arab world is one of the last underdeveloped frontiers for digital media. That day was yesterday. Yahoo bought Maktoob.com, the largest Arabic online portal, for an undisclosed sum, reportedly around $100 million.

But with this deal, Yahoo landed the biggest digital media acquisition to date in the Middle East. Yahoo calls it their biggest geographic expansion in years. I call it a very smart move. Maktoob has been the #1 Arabic website (in terms of users) for years, steadily growing organically and through a series of regional acquisitions. Its acquisition was inevitable. The only surprise is that it took so long. Maktoob has been around for almost 10 years.

320 million Arabic speakers worldwide, but only 1 per cent of all online content is in Arabic. That math adds up to outsized growth as the online advertising market catches up with the rapid rise in Internet penetration and usage in the Arab world. This deal alone may drive increased online advertising in the Middle East, as well as accelerate the shift away from newspapers and print advertising.

So Maktoob becomes Yahoo Maktoob at the price of $6 per user ($100 million for 16.5 million users). Although Middle East entrepreneurs will envy the valuation and the newly minted millionaires among them, that price will look dirt cheap one day. And that day is today.

Can this latest effort to re-monetize news work? Assuming it survives antitrust review, can a handful of major media publishers shift the entire digital news market?

The theory seems simple: combine the biggest, most trusted names in the same “walled garden” and people will pay to play, by subscriptions or micro-payments. One cartel, one low price.

But news is not oil. News is not a pure commodity that can be refined into a product with a uniform value regardless of the producer. Can every news producer (or even most) be the Wall Street Journal? Doubtful.

Online news is sunshine, available almost anywhere. And we the readers are walking solar panels.

The WSJ and a few others like the Financial Times occupy a privileged place in the news space. Frankly, their product is worth more. It is timely and quantifiably valuable, both to readers and advertisers. Indeed, a consortium of premier news brands may prove more valuable for increasing ad dollars than generating reader revenues.

Newspapers are definitely interested in consortiums. In four short months, Journalism Online’s payment platform for digital distribution of news has attracted over 500 newspapers.

Still, I suspect that few news organizations have a critical mass of readers who view them as indispensable, and are willing to pay. An oligopoly of premier news publishers may save those chosen few. That is no guarantee that most publishers, even if collected into a broad consortium, will attract enough paying readers.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Once again San Francisco renews its claim to be the most open city in America, and the most open government.

Mayor Gavin Newsom announced the launch of DataSF.org, a new website offering citizens access to raw, machine-readable government data on a wide range of issues from crime and housing to health inspections and street repairs.

The basic idea behind this initiative? Open data drives innovation. Free access to information gathered by government enables developers and citizen entrepreneurs to create new applications and online services. Open data is exactly what will power the growth of hyperlocal websites, which cater to the interests and needs of local communities.

The emergence of hyperlocal news and online services is already a trend receiving much attention, and investment. MSNBC’s acquisition of EveryBlock, a hyperlocal news aggregator, is one recent example, but not the only one. AOL and even the New York Times have entered the hyper-local space.

Finding the right business model for hyperlocal sites will be a challenge. For every MSNBC and AOL buying in, there is a Washington Post exiting. Success requires real community participation, not always easy to sustain when the website belongs to a big corporate entity, as well as a local advertising base will to spend.

Still, more governments offering open data is a good thing, promoting transparency and public accountability, regardless of whether hyperlocal websites succeed or not.

China will release new fuel efficiency standards requiring a minimum of 42.2 miles per gallon (for every car, not a fleet average) by 2015, far beyond what has been proposed in the U.S. and even farther beyond what any current US-made car can achieve.

Back to my niece’s comment. Not only is it wrong on the facts today, it is wrong about tomorrow. According to a 2008 survey, only 10% of Chinese students in the U.S. want to stay here permanently. Barely half (54%) even want to work briefly in the U.S. after graduation. They are taking their degrees back to China, where they see brighter, long-term economic prospects. Can anyone say “Back to the Future?” Or reverse engineering?

Not convinced where the trend line is headed? It is not only American-educated Chinese students returning to China. The number of young Americans seeking (and finding) work in China is rapidly rising. Yes it is partly a reflection of today’s recession in the U.S. It also says something about tomorrow’s future in China.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Sarah Palin, Congressional Republicans and other flat earthers may reject the science of climate change and evidence of man-made global warming. U.S. national security agencies, however, take the threat of global warming seriously.

These are not merely pollyannish predictions from lefty academics. This is coming from analysts at the CIA, the Pentagon, Center for Naval Analysis and US Army War College who all consider the risks of global warming real, and a threat multiplier. Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, agrees. His testimony before Congress stated that the Intelligence Community believes "global climate change will have important and extensive implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years."

Doubters routinely dismiss or downplay observable changes like glacial melt, rising temperatures, coastal inundation and extreme weather events. Intelligence analysts, however, link them to specific national security threats like scarcity of cropland and freshwater, population displacements, new disease vectors, resource conflicts and political destabilization. Even the loss of vital US military bases.

Climate changes are not maybe's or aberrations. They are measurable.

Last week, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that the polar ice cap shrunk an average 41,000 square miles per day in July, well above the historical average and equaling the rate of melt seen in 2007 when the North Pole ice hit a record low. Top 3 years of fastest ice melt? 2007, 2006, 2009.

If climate change skeptics won't take facts seriously, at least military planners do. The Pentagon is wargaming scenarious that incorporate climate-induced crises in vulnerable regions (like South Asia and the Middle East).

At least some in the US Senate are taking notice. The Foreign Relations Committee recently held hearings on the issue.

Not only are global warming naysayers staring blindly in the face of the best available science, they are being reckless with our national security.

And these are just the portrayals covered by mainstream media. Others have not received primetime mention (like Obama as Satan).

American Presidents always draw harsh criticism and caricature.

But as shown in this chart of search results associating each of the past 4 presidents with a label, Obama’s association with negative portrayals far exceeds other recent Presidents (even with “Bush” essentially double counted by not distinguishing between the two Bush presidents).

The search structure was:

president + [name] + [label]

When politics and polemics are stripped away, I would suggest that a single fact animates this anti-Obama phenomena … Obama is the first black President of the United States.

But more must be done. Windows of transparency are nice. Access to actual data is better.

Government needs to open source its information, research and investment. Perhaps our new federal CTO and CIO should commit to opening up access to a different set of government data every week. The public can help. Create an online forum where people can suggest (and vote for) what information they want made publicly available.

Call it democratizing data. Or open sourcing data. Either way, there is a powerful magnifier effect to increasing public access to government data that will drive innovation and real economic opportunity, not to mention government transparency.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is working on the first national broadband plan for the U.S.

Better late than never.

During yesterday's stop on the FCC Summer Tour, its new chairman, Julius Genachowski, referred to broadband as this generation's highway system. They are ambitious words ... if not original.

The same exact point was made here over 3 years ago. Again, better late than never.

There is a major difference between our broadband highway and the asphalt highways built in the 1950s to connect America. Broadband is much more important to America's future.

Broadband does not to just connect our cities; it connects our lives. Broadband reaches into every house, every business, every hospital, every school and will power endless innovations that will re-shape our lives.

And a policy of net neutrality is vital for keeping these digital roads flat and fast-moving for everyone. Without it, broadband will turn into an endless series of toll roads on which those people and companies who buy the Easy Pass move fast while the rest crawl along in the right lane.